Wednesday, 7 February 2018

The Planning and Assessment
Commission has just approved open-cut mining in the beautiful Gardens of
Stone area. The information below was sent to us today by the Blue
Mountains Conservation Society.

On
Monday 5 February 2018, the independent Planning and Assessment Commission
(PAC) decided that Invincible mine can restart open-cut mining in the Gardens
of Stone area and in the former Coalpac proposal area. The area is beside the
Castlereagh Highway and will extend the Invincible’s current devastated
moonscape.

In
2014 the PAC rejected a larger open cut proposal including this area saying
that the highest and best use of the land was conservation.

Mine
owners, Manildra Group, argued that the mine should reopen to supply coal to
their Shoalhaven factory to assist in making ethanol for petrol blends.
Even though they are already using alternate coal supplies.

The
approval observes a buffer zone around nearby pagodas but, very importantly, it
does not protect the total pagoda landscape complex from permanent
destruction. (Previous PACs recognised that the slopes and associated
woodlands associated with the pagoda formations were essential for the
protection of the animals and plants including threatened species).

The
endangered Purple Copper Butterfly, ‘one of Australia’s rarest butterflies'
uses the land to be mined. However, the PAC has said mining can go ahead
and has agreed that the butterflies’ essential habitat, a Bursaria spinosa
subspecies and the associated anthills, is removed and replanted elsewhere in a
'translocation trial'. This is highly unlikely to work and will put this rare
and beautiful butterfly at further risk.

The
loss of habitat for the endangered broad headed snake will most likely be
compensated for by the mine paying money into the NSW government’s species
conservation fund. This decision will open the door to further destructive
open cut mining proposals in the area.

We
totally oppose the destruction of the conservation values of the unprotected
Gardens of Stone region. The Society will continue to seek full
protection of the Gardens of Stone Stage 2 Proposal area as State Conservation
Areas.